Written by: Bilge Güven & Diego Rupolo
Edited by: Queenie Chen, Dr. Paolo Frascà, Dr. Licia Canton
On May 8th, members of the Jackman Scholars-in-Residence program, an intensive research program for undergraduate students at the University of Toronto, had the privilege of attending the launch of Here & Now 2: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing hosted online by Queer Intersections at the University of Oxford (UK). This second anthology of Queer-Italian Canadian fiction, autobiographical nonfiction, and poetry comes three years after the first volume, which was published in 2021, and includes contributors from the first volume as well as new authors. Speaking at the event were editor of the volume Licia Canton, scholars Paolo Frascà and Mirko Casagranda, and authors Liana Cusmano, Julian A M.P., and Christopher Sisca.
The event kicked off with the editor, Dr. Licia Canton (she/her), outlining the necessity of this second volume. After the publication of the first volume, resistance to the notion of a Queer and Italian-Canadian identity from some circles within the Italian-Canadian community was a reason, Canton noted, that “the work must continue.” This not-always-positive response is also echoed in Paolo Frascà’s introduction to the second volume and can still be seen today in “angry” social media reactions to innocuous posts describing future events to celebrate the launch of Here & Now’s second volume.
On a more positive note, Canton also cited the continued community-building as a motivation for additional volumes, noting that despite the existing chosen families in Queer communities, “there’s always room for community building, less silence during Sunday lunch.” The building of a community, human connections, and the expressions of gratitude by the anthology's contributors and readership that took place between the publication of the first and second volume were a profound takeaway from the event.
“There’s always room for community building, less silence during Sunday lunch.”
The event continued with speeches from the two scholars who contributed introductions to the second volume.
Paolo Frascà (he/they) is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Italian Studies at the University of Toronto. He is the co-director of the research project connected to the volumes, Queer Italian-Canadian Artists: A Study on Ethnic Belonging and Cultural Production.
They started by acknowledging the land on which they are located and the project operates, referencing the Toronto Purchase (Treaty 13). They then spoke to the relevance of the colonial tool that aims to regulate sexuality and gender by institutionalizing kinships through heterosexist ideals. They pointed out that migrants like Italian-Canadians have often reproduced these ideals to gain favorable citizenship rights and privileges in so-called Canada, which continues to affect community members, especially those who find themselves outside the ideal boundaries.
Echoing the sentiment of these works that bring individuals together and create a community beyond what could be imagined alone, Dr. Frascà referred to a metaphor of a cluster of trees seeing each other and realizing they make a forest.
“Vedere gli alberi e non vedere la foresta.”
An important part of this awareness-raising ecosystem is the classroom, Dr. Frascà highlighted. Referring to bell hooks’ Teaching to Transgress, he described this project as contributing to “education as the practice of freedom” (hooks 4).
“The classroom remains the most radical space of possibility in the academy.”
- bell hooks
As mentioned, amidst the joy and gratitude, the work has also received negative reactions. Dr. Frascà recalled a fellow academic reaching out to express negative feelings towards the project by using the Latin exclamation “O tempora! O mores!” in an email. This Ciceronian expression translates to “Oh, what times! Oh, what morals!” Upon inquiring what this project had to do with Italian language and culture, the scholar was sent an array of resources explaining the many connections and intersection between Italian culture and queer experiences.
Mirko Casagranda (he/him) is an Associate Professor of English Linguistics and Translation Studies at the University of Calabria.
Dr. Casagranda read from his introduction to the second volume, titled “Queering the Italian-Canadian Grand(Mother) Tongue.” He highlighted how the first-generation immigrant grandparents’ experiences often parallel those of their queer grandchildren featured in the book. In both demographics, identity is linguistically performed. Whether double or triple hyphenated as (queer-)Italian-Canadian, nonne and grandchildren are the carriers of Italian culture, which may otherwise be lost. Acceptance by nonna, the (crypto-)matriarch of many Italian families, can nourish a sense of belonging in the famiglia. As Dr. Casagranda mentioned, while the words “queer” and “queerness” are mentioned 44 and 17 times respectively in the anthology, “nonna” appears 77 times. This further solidifies the role of nonna in bridging past and future, legitimizing the hybridity and fluidity of the triple hyphenated identity of her grandchildren.
Dr. Casagranda introduced the idea of “trans-languaging” with reference to the possibility of a father tongue becoming a mother tongue. This is also articulated in the nonfiction piece, present in the volume, by Scott Belluz: “Italian is my father tongue. . . Italian was never my father’s tongue. . . My father’s mother tongue had been silenced.” For some writers in the volume, Italian is the father tongue, the language of heteronormativity and rejection. By embracing the heritage culture through the nonna and bonded to her by the common experience of identity translation, queer-Italian-Canadian grandchildren sustain and embrace Italian culture by queering traditions. This is seen in Liana Cusmano’s poem Ma, ti fidanzeresti con me?, where they write about sharing the Italian language in their queer relationship: “I never get tired of hearing words in our mouths that mean home”.
Julian A M.P. (he/they) is an artist, teacher, and a queer, trans-masculine, second-generation Italian-Canadian. He performed a captivating and emotional reading of his nonfiction piece titled “Real Boy.” Anchoring his writing in the classic Italian children’s story Le avventure di Pinocchio (Carlo Collodi, 1881), Julian shared his story of feeling trapped in his body his entire life. He expressed that he did not have the right language to understand and articulate the discomfort in the relationship with his body. He emphasized the impact of the social media platform TikTok in providing him with the language he needed to understand himself, to wake up, like Pinocchio did. Julian also spoke on the intersection of neurodivergence and gender diversity, expressing gratitude to the TikTok communities using specific language to describe themselves to each other.
After Julian’s emotional contribution, spoken word artist Liana Cusmano (they/them) (along with most of the attendees!) expressed that they needed a brief moment to digest what we all had the privilege of receiving from Julian. As a contributor to both the first and second Here & Now anthologies, Cusmano also touched on the theme of gratitude when they noted it was “an honour to be a part of this community when just a few years ago, [they] could not have conceived of an event like this." Cusmano spoke of the evolution of the intersectional queer-Italian-Canadian artist community and on how their work has been inspired and driven by this intersection in the past, both before and after their participation in the Creative Spaces documentary that began this project.
Poet Christopher Sisca (he/him) is a first-time contributor to the Here & Now anthologies and began his contribution to the event by noting that it was “extremely inspiring” and “exciting to be a part of the community that’s been building.” Sisca spoke of his experience conducting doctoral fieldwork in Calabria as both an opportunity to learn about where he was from beyond the stories of his grandparents and also a challenge to create space for his own queer identity in that ancestral context. At the event, Sisca read two of his six pieces in the anthology (“Confluenza” and “Cipolle”), noting that being contacted by Licia Canton and thinking about contributing to this anthology was an initial catalyst to explore these two intersections of his identity through creative writing.
The launch of Here & Now 2: An Anthology of Queer Italian-Canadian Writing consisted of heart-warming moments induced by valuable works by Italian-Canadian artists who identify as queer or are friends of the queer community. Editor Licia Canton and academics Paolo Frascà and Mirko Casagranda introduced the event and talked about their contributions to the current and previous volumes, noting the importance and impact this project has had at both the individual and community levels. The artists Julian A M.P., Liana Cusmano, and Christopher Sisca shared with us their works published in the volume speaking to their experiences as queer-Italian-Canadian artists. Stories like Sisca’s and Cusmano’s, where artists find new opportunities to explore these intersecting aspects of their identity, speak to the value of this second (and perhaps additional future) volume(s) of Here & Now. The volumes can be purchased on the Accenti Magazine website and we hope that you will enjoy their content!
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